It’s late August. It’s that time of year when NFL fans come out of hibernation and return from their caves. They begin to salivate at the mere sight of training camp footage on television and of course those ultimately frivolous preseason games. America can’t wait to have their football back.

Unless, of course, you’re a New York Giants fan.

As a Big Blue supporter, I know I will probably never again in my life see anything like what the G-Men went through last January and February. We witnessed our maddeningly inconsistent quarterback successfully play rope-a-dope with the entire league, and put one over on the New England Perfects in the Super Bowl. Overcoming their own flaws (of which there were many), injuries, and a murderers’ row of playoff opponents, the success of the 2007 Giants may well be coming to a theater near you right about the same time that Boise State movie comes out.

So pardon me if I wanted to bask in the glow of last year’s legacy and that glorious postseason just a little bit longer. After all, once that Thursday night opener against the Redskins kicks off, that all gets pushed aside and buried underneath each new play and subplot of 2008. Can’t they just re-air all of last year’s games all over again instead?

If history is any indicator, 2008 will probably not be kind to Big Blue. The ‘87 Giants missed the playoffs after the ‘86 Giants dominated the league. The ‘91 Giants lost coach Bill Parcells to “retirement” and lost their way, instead finding nothing but their living room couch and TV set in January. The 2001 Giants, who had just lost the Super Bowl to the Ravens, also missed out on the postseason the following year, instead watching the aforementioned Patriots dynasty being born.

Last year’s ‘07 team was not a great team. They played three, maybe four great games down the stretch and essentially exploited the NFL’s single-elimination playoff system for all it was worth. They went 10-6, for God’s sake. Only one other Super Bowl-winning team had a record that poor, and that team had Joe Montana and Jerry Rice on it, so they probably knew they could afford a little regular season malaise.

Since 2005, the Giants have been a steady consistent team although never producing dominant or breakout regular season results. They have made the playoffs three consecutive years now, although only reaching 11 wins once and they have never had a first-round bye. NFC East rivals Philly and Dallas both have had much more dominant teams for longer periods of time in the decade. Their fans must be losing their minds wondering how the Giants, with results like those, could have one more Super Bowl ring than either of them. Granted, as much fun as that is for me to point out, the bottom line is that it is highly unlikely that they will suddenly become realistic title contenders even with the championship experience.

The most pressing issue, however, is the gradual leaking of talent this franchise has seen just in the offseason alone. After 2006, the Giants lost Tiki Barber and that appeared to be a death blow at the time, little did we know. Gone are Tiki Barber, Jeremy Shockey, and Michael Strahan. Now Osi Umenyiora is out for the season, so the team threw money at Strahan to return, only to hear a swift but understandable “thanks, but no thanks” reply from Mr. Gaptooth himself. Suddenly, the identity of the franchise comes into question. Who is the face of the Giants this year? Is it really Eli Manning? Brandon Jacobs? Plaxico Burress? Amani Toomer? Who else is left?

So us Giants fans will now have to deal with a season in which both of last year’s starting defensive ends — the main reason the New York defense wrecked Tom Brady seven months ago — have to be replaced.

On offense, Shockey finally got his trade, and for less than stellar value in return. Having seen how much it infuriated Shockey when his ankle broke that Monday night home game against Washington, and knowing how much it killed him through the playoffs and Super Bowl to have to watch from afar, it killed me just as much to know he would not get another shot at a Super Bowl for New York.

Now all those who fell in love with folk-hero backup tight end Kevin Boss last season can eat their hearts out, at least until they realize he is merely Kevin Boss. He cannot be expected to produce anywhere near the rate Shockey did.

So in effect, both sides of the ball will be weakened significantly in 2008. Eli Manning, a hero all offseason, will go back to putting up the same 24 TD 20 INT numbers and being the scourge of New Yorkers once he throws 4 red zone interceptions in an awful home loss to the 49ers in Week 7, or something to that effect.

Of course, as the fans of the world champs, we are asking for no one’s pity, just perspective. While we will forever treasure the old highlights of last year, we can no longer stay married to them once the season starts. Even if the 2008 Giants are most likely not headed in the direction of a dynasty, it is time to move on and write a new book on a new season, a book that won’t be nearly as hard to put down.

Overall though, calling the series was a blast and a half, and it re-affirmed my passion for calling play-by-play as well as my belief that I can someday do this for a living. While I enjoy writing columns as well (evidenced by the bundle of past columns I just added to my profile), announcing is much less of a grind, smoother, easier, more fun. When you write an article, often you feel you need to come up with a number of clever one-liners, puns and quips, have a formula and a point to the article. It needs to be punchy, funny, poignant and when I feel its lacking that, the thought process as well as my fingertips can often grind to a halt trying to find that perfect line. With announcing that problem doesnt exist. Calling the game makes the 3 hours fly by and its amazing how quickly halftime comes along.

My hope is that I can parlay this profile page into somewhat of a resume for that ever-elusive sports media job be it writing, announcing, anchoring or anything else that utilizes my talents. In time I hope to do some baseball broadcasts as well, most likely for the Yankees periodically throughout the summer and I also hope to do a narrative hi-light show of the most memorable moments from those 08 Finals. I would provide the voice-overs as well as the sample calls of the action. I may also decide to do articles or podcasts/shows detailing my memories or narratives of past championship series of various sports. Stay tuned. Hopefully I can build up a nice little following on here if I haven’t already.

I am very proud of my body of work over those six games and feel that my better calls during the course of those games would compare well to any professional radio calls of those same moments, whether it be from ESPN or otherwise. I know I made my mistakes and there are flaws mixed in as well but I feel strongly that with time and repetition, I will improve and smooth out some of those flaws, and hope to become as solid a broadcaster as any. I owe all the thanks to Youcastr for creating such a brilliant site to allow a talent like mine and others on here to flourish.

My dream since childhood has always been to announce play-by-play professionally. This probably happened sometime in between becoming a sports fanatic at 10 years old and absorbing and memorizing tons of not-so-useless sports information at once, and realizing I had very little to no athletic ability to someday help my beloved Knicks on the hardwood.

Of course practicing this is tricky. Sure you can mute your tv and announce the game you’re watching. But you need people to not be around so you don’t annoy them or otherwise feel awkward (unless they request it of course). Sometimes your friends or siblings will implore you to announce their pickup 1-on-1 game in the driveway or Madden video game to make the proceedings feel more legitimized to them. These can be fun but rarely do you get a chance to critique yourself or get much constructive feedback.

In college I had but two precious broadcasting assignments for the Quinnipiac Men’s Basketball team, one as a freshman and one as a senior. The minidisc of the freshman broadcast was in the possession of my announcing partner who said he would convert it to audiotape for me and give me a copy. He never got around to it. The Senior broadcast was supposed to go over the airwaves on the QU website where it would be saved as a file. The website was down that day. I realized that going in. I alerted the folks at the radio station about this issue before the event. Nothing was done and the record of game too, was lost.

During my internship at News 12 Long Island Sports, I got to work with the legend Bob Wolff and had conversations with him about my interest in doing play-by-play. Wolff told me if I wanted to show him my skills on a tape someday he would be glad to listen. I tried this by calling a couple of Yankee games to an audiotape recorder in my room, one of them being an exciting 1-0 Yankees win over the Red Sox in a September pennant race. Mariano Rivera had to pitch out of trouble in the 8th and 9th and the excitement in my voice reflected the urgency of the game situation. I showed Bob the portion of my tape where Rivera nailed down the save and the legend himself had nothing but praise for me. However even this I take with a grain of salt. Bob is a good-hearted man without the hard edges of a skeptic or cynic. I believe he felt I had talent, but I feel the opinion of someone who had been in the thick of the industry more recently than Bob, who had settled into a more relaxed role at News 12 taping just a weekly observational feature segment, might have made for a better measuring stick.

That was in 2005. Since then I really had not tried to announce a full game at any time. When I came across this site I realized it was exactly what I needed, and I decided the upcoming 08 NBA Finals would be the perfect opportunity to try to call a game or two and see if I still had what it took and hope it would be just like riding a bicycle.

So I tried my hand with game 1. A very exciting and memorable game with the histrionics and dramatics of Paul Pierce leaving the most lasting impression allowed me plenty of moments to express the drama and express my talent and creativity. I learned quickly though how hard it is to call for radio when most of my life I had been listening to and studying television announcers, not radio guys. Especially with the speed of basketball and the difficulty of explaining where the ball-handler is on the court at all times, I realized just how hard it is to paint a picture for the listener as they say.

I felt I still made the broadcast exciting and you may notice I practically jumped through the roof when Kobe Bryant went up for an Alley-oop dunk in the 3rd quarter, an alley-oop dunk I might add, that had no bearing whatsoever on the game’s outcome. It was fun but as my brother listened to my broadcast after the game, he did tell me I sounded better for tv than radio. Translation: I needed to pour more visual details and descriptions into my calls for the rest of the series.

By this time I had mentally committed to calling all 6 games. I started to refresh myself on my radio hoops terms and think back to Gus Johnson calling Knicks games on radio. The block, the elbow, the wing, coach’s marker, top of the circle, the dotted line, all these terms I needed in my vocabulary at all times so the listener could “see” where the ball-handler was when a play was unfolding. This is evident in my call for game 2, as I feel I became somewhat more technically sound describing things from there on.

I had major issues with static throughout all 6 games. I don’t know if this was due to the slowness of my computer or if it is common among youcastr broadcasts but you will hear portions of loud static ruining sections of games at times. Luckily I had a loyal family tuning in all their laptops to my broadcast so they could run into my room and tell me they heard nothing but static and to refresh the site so I did not lose much.

While I may have been the most prepared before the first game, where I had espn.com and nba.com on the laptop to look up point totals and halftime statistics to cite during the game, I grew more comfortable on the mic with each passing game and gradually eliminated some of the awkward silences I had allowed in games 1 and 2. Pretty soon I had gone from having a strict mental checklist to just winging it and not missing a beat.

I also realized that when you start to speak quickly to keep up with the action, your tongue will outrace your mind and slip up more than you’d like. Last names of players get switched with their teammates. Court terms get confused, etc. You can stop and correct yourself on air but it’s still bothersome. In Game 2, my biggest plague was Leon Powe became Allen Poe at the worst possible time. Suddenly I was grasping desperately for his first name in my mind while Powe was having a monster game in the Finals. Why Allen Poe? Perhaps because there was already a Ray Allen and a Tony Allen on Boston, perhaps because of poet Edgar Allen Poe whose name had snuck into my mind and confused me as well. Either way, it’s probably the one moment of the series I would most love to have a mulligan for, although I can think of at least one other.

In game 4 I tried to add a 1980s style NBA on CBS opener for the classic Lakers-Celtics feel by playing the theme on youtube over my recorded voice using a program called Wavepad. I failed to realize that when this was played back over the microphone it was too quiet. When I tried reading and playing the music off youtube live during the pregame of game 5, things froze for seconds at a time and my computer lagged, I had to come up with some creative stretching of my script to accomodate the lag time.

I got to call two very entertaining contests in games 4 and 5 with the Celtics making the epic 24 point comeback in the former and Kobe putting the clamps on another comeback attempt in game 5. During the early stages of game 4, it is clear that I could not see the Celtics possibly winning that game. In retrospect I don’t blame myself for that as I don’t think anyone else could have seen it any other way. What the Celtics did that night was unprecedented, and they did it on the road as an added bonus. It would have helped to know this at the time but the 24 point deficit is the greatest ever overcome in NBA Finals history. I speculated on this on the air but did not have the fact straight.

In game 5 I made my most excited call of the series as Kobe forced a steal of Paul Pierce and raced down the other end where he took Lamar Odom’s outlet pass and dunked it to put the Lakers up 4 with 37 seconds left. It looked like a possible trademark play of a series. It exhibited perfectly Kobe’s defensive intensity, killer instinct, and intangibles. He would not be denied. It made me think maybe, just maybe, he could engineer a miracle and beat the Celtics twice in Boston in games 6 and 7. Perhaps then that play in game 5 would take on a life of its own. Maybe that’s why I broke out into near hysterics in that moment.

Yet amazingly, announcing this game does not get me deeply emotionally involved in every contest the way I expected. In fact it detaches me somewhat. As the announcer I have an obligation to the listeners to express the excitement and the emotion of the game instantly as soon as it happens. This means that those emotions never really get a chance to sink in. I’m too busy sending them right back out in verbal form before they can really cut into me. Even as I shouted that Kobe had a breakaway slam, that little part of me inside that normally goes “Wow! Holy $#!T did that just happen? Can you believe what this means now?” was absent, it had already been used up before it could register. That is one of the unusual side effects of announcing in my brief experience.

After game 6 and Kevin Garnett was interviewed and damn near lost his mind in jubilation and tears and shouts, I was putting the microphone up to the tv to capture it. I was still viewing it as an announcer covering an assignment, the fan in me was still on the back burner. My mom would later ask me if I cried or got emotional during Garnett’s memorable postgame interview, and I recalled that no, I had not at all. Then I realized that if I had just been watching as a fan, the enormity of that interview and that moment where the newly crowned champion Garnett was left raw, and emotionally naked for all the world to see and share in his joy, might have hit me full force. Now it was almost a mere abstraction to me. I knew what was happening, but I didn’t feel it the way I was used to. Perhaps this effect is canceled out when you can actually attend the event in person. (continued in part II)

NBA’s Second Season Is Red-Hot

March Madness was fun, but now its time to enter May Madness.

The playoffs have not been with us long but they may already be the best and most entertaining installment of the NBA’s postseason since the glorious days of NBC ended in 2002. The first round has been wildly intriguing all across the board thus far, and the possibilities for future rounds continue to intrigue. The subplots and themes have already been well developed only a week into things.

Strong Lower Seeds

Some, but not all, of this is a result of the NBA’s new divisional and seeding system. Three divisions instead of two, and all division winners regardless of how weak are guaranteed to be seeded one through three. Fair? No. But interesting? But of course. In the NBA, a league where the favorite is more likely to win than in any other sport and upsets come few and far between, the Lakers, Kings, Bulls, Clippers, and Pacers are all six, seven or eight seeds that have managed to at least tie their series at two against seemingly superior opponents. One has already won their series while another is on the verge of clinching theirs. This brings me to my second point.

The Clippers!

Did you ever imagine seeing those wonderful-but-tragic red and blue jerseys with the script lettering dominating the action in late April and May? While Kenyon Martin was confirming to us that he is in fact the ticking time bomb we all knew he can be, and star forward Carmelo Anthony once again played the first round as if someone braided his cornrows too tight, LA’s other team hit on all cylinders with their newfound nucleus. While two members of that core are late blooming superstars (Corey Maggette and Elton Brand), one more closely resembles E.T. and the other – if I may borrow from The Sports Guy himself – the Unfrozen Caveman (Sam Cassell and Chris Kaman, respectively) than actual NBA starters. And yet it works. The Staples Center was going wild, only this wasn’t the Staples Center we knew of. The lane was red, the sidelines, blue. And yet a capacity crowd was cheering wildly just the same. Their team dominated four of five games against the young-and-hungry Nuggets, and was going to the second round. Was this an alternate universe?

This also goes to show that the Clippers did in fact make the wise choice by tanking that odd regular season finale in Memphis. The Grizzles wanted to lose, but the Clips wanted it more! As a result, Memphis has been swept once again and the Clippers are headed for round two with plenty of rest.

Lakers vs Suns – The Marquee Series

Nash versus Kobe. MVP versus MVP snub. When was the last time a 2-7 matchup got this much attention and had this much solid play? Game one featured Steve Nash hitting a huge three to hold off the Lakers in the Arizona desert. Bryant answered that with a nasty Darryl Dawkins-style “yo’ mama!” dunk over a stumbling Nash. It only got more personal as it got to LA in game four, where the nightmare seemed never-ending for number 13. The Suns had the game won twice, the series tied twice, and Nash managed to cough it up twice. Meanwhile Kobe had the answer both times. An impossible yo-yo layup over the top of Boris Diaw to force overtime and a be-like-Mike jumper over two Suns at the buzzer that caused bedlam not seen since Robert Horry versus Sacramento four years earlier. That shot prevented a 3-1 series, this shot created one. And the Lakers are now a single win from an improbable 7 seed-versus-6 seed Staples Series in LA. That’s right: Clippers-Lakers, winner take all. Just as long as the Lakers don’t let the dangerous freewheeling Suns off the mat.

Kobe had also answered many critics’ cries that he wasn’t a team player. Number 8 shared in the victory with Lamar Odom, Smush Parker and Luke Walton, all of which played huge roles in this improbable Laker comeback. It’s also worth noting that while Bryant hit the tying and winning baskets, he was not the Lakers leading scorer in that game, Odom was. Perhaps Phil Jackson has done it again. Perhaps Odom has finally figured out how to be Scottie Pippen. And remember years ago when the Lakers were winning titles and everyone claimed Kobe was the second coming of Michael? After this season, who’s to say he still isn’t?

For the Suns to have any chance, they will have to conquer their demons: Phoenix is the only playoff team in NBA history to not win a single game decided by 3 points or less. With a blowout home win in game 5, Phoenix has a chance, but I predict they will have to win one such nail-biting affair if they are to pull off the NBA’s version of a 7-10 split and make the comeback.

LeBron

Drop to a knee and genuflect. The Long-awaited arrival of the King is finally at hand! With a triple-double to announce his coming in his first ever playoff game, he battled Washington’s challenger-to-the-throne, Gilbert Arenas to a duel in the final minutes of game three. LeBron thrust the sword through the Wizard with an impossible power move in the low post. While he found himself trapped in midair, unable to release a shot in traffic, he patiently waited until an instant before his feet hit the ground to let fly an up-close bank-shot winner with 3 seconds remaining. It would be the new #23’s first playoff game winner.

Yet Arenas has been here before, just a year ago, playing without home court to the highly touted “Baby Bulls” and they surprised many in winning in six games. While LeBron may be more talented than Arenas, Gilbert has a stronger supporting cast, as Washington can be seen as a three-headed monster of Arenas, Antawn Jamison and Caron Butler. They have split the first four games of this series and it may very well be up in the air. However home court advantage in the NBA playoffs is often the defining factor in an even series. I would put the money on LeBron’s Cavaliers in seven games and say the Wiz can’t do it two years in a row.

Buzzer Beaters

Last but not least, the NBA is giving this year’s stellar NCAA tournament a run for its money. Game-winners are pouring into the nets like coins at the arcade. Honestly, how many of you had heard of Kevin Martin – no that’s not a misprint; Kenyon Martin was in street clothes – before game 3 of the Kings-Spurs series? Well that second-year no-name player just dropped a stunning reverse layup over Tim Duncan at the buzzer to keep Sacramento alive. The shot may have recalled memories of Denham Brown’s circus heroics for UConn only a month earlier in the NCAA regional finals, only Martin’s shot won the game. This was just an answer to Brent Barry’s trick-shot three pointer that found every corner, including the top of the backboard, before dropping through in the final seconds of regulation to force overtime in game two. LeBron had an aforementioned game winner, Kobe had a game-saver and a game-winner in the same contest. Dirk “Diggler” Nowitzki had a gutsy three pointer off a rebound that forced overtime and ultimately put the Grizzlies to early hibernation. And yet Carmelo Anthony, the most likely source for a game-winning shot in the regular season, could not join the party. Stay tuned though, the first round of the playoffs is far from being over. We could be in store for something truly special.

Now if only we can get the NBA back on NBC where it belongs.

Published 2006-5-7 (approximately) for Sports-Central.org